Biopiracy and GMOs: The Fate of Iraq's Agriculture

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Biopiracy and GMOs: The Fate of Iraq's Agriculture


by Ghali Hassan

December 12, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca




While the Iraqi people are struggling to end the U.S. military Occupation and its associated violence, the fate of their food sources and agricultural heritage is being looted behind closed doors. Unless the colonisation of Iraq ends, the U.S. Occupation of Iraq will continue to have lasting and disastrous effects on Iraq's economy and Iraq's ability to feed its people.

Iraq is home to the oldest agricultural traditions in the world. Historical, genetic and archaeological evidence, including radiocarbon dating of carbon-containing materials at the site, show that the Fertile Crescent, including modern Iraq, was the centre of domestication for a remarkable array of today's primary agricultural crops and livestock animals. Wheat, barley, rye, lentils, sheep, goats, and pigs were all originally brought under human control around 8000 BCE. Iraq is where wild wheat was once originated and many of its cereal varieties have been exported and adapted worldwide. <1> The beginning of agriculture led inexorably to the development of human civilization. <2>

Since then, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia have used informal seed supply systems to plant crops, suited to their particular environment. The saving and sharing of seeds in Iraq has always been a largely informal matter. Local varieties of grain and legumes have been adapted to local conditions over the millennia. While much has changed in the ensuing millennia, agriculture remains an essential part of Iraq's heritage. Despite extreme aridity, characterised by low rainfalls and soil salinity, Iraq had a world standard agricultural sector producing good quality food for generations.

According to the Rome-based UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), 97 percent of Iraqi farmers in 2002 still used saved seed from their own stocks from last year's harvest, or purchased from local markets. This despite the criminal sanctions -- maintained by the U.S. and Britain for dubious reasons -- which destroyed Iraq's agricultural sector. The 1997 FAO report found that "Crop yields . . . remain low due to poor land preparation as a result of lack of machinery, low use of inputs, deteriorating soil quality and irrigation facilities' and the animal population has declined steeply due to severe shortages of feed and vaccines during the embargo years."


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